WINNING MARK: Though Mark Sanchez is often criticized, he enters this week with a 33-23 record as an NFL starter, including playoffs. Photo: Getty Images

WINNING MARK: Though Mark Sanchez is often criticized, he enters this week with a 33-23 record as an NFL starter, including playoffs. (
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Sometimes, it’s simple: Quarterbacks are the baseball players of football. You can measure their numbers and get a pretty good read on if they’re any good or not. Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady: You look at their numbers, even the hardest-lined SABR-metrician moonlighting in football can understand how good they are.

Sometimes you have to search a little. Take Eli Manning: Even in 2011, a year that ended up with a Super Bowl parade, the feeling you had about him — he’s pretty good early in the game but he is a monster late — was backed up by numbers. Eli’s QB rating by quarters in ’11: 1Q 87.5; 2Q 79.8; 3Q 90.0.

Fourth quarter: 110.0

Nothing is quite so simple about Mark Sanchez. If he were a baseball player you sense he would be far more appealing to Clint Eastwood in “Trouble With the Curve” than he ever would be to Brad Pitt in “Moneyball,” that lacking eye-popping data a scout will rave about his “strong chin,” “excellent balance” and ability to “look you in the eye.”

“The most important thing,” Sanchez said, “is getting the win. It doesn’t matter how it looks. Thank goodness they don’t put pictures on the scoreboard.”

If you are inclined to defend Sanchez — and as someone who does that a bit, I can tell you there’s plenty of leg room on the bus — this is what always serves as a first defense. The stats aren’t going to do it for you. Certainly the periodic lapses in judgment will countermand most of your testimony. People actually chuckle — practically giggle — if you want to argue that he belongs on the list of Top 16 QBs rather than Bottom 16.

So you go with the victories. You point to the fact that he is 29-21 as a starting quarterback in the league, 33-23 if you would like to throw in playoff games. That .580 winning percentage through his first 50 games isn’t just tops in Jets history (Joe Namath was 27-19-4, Ken O’Brien 27-23) it’s also better than Eli (27-23) and Phil Simms (23-27).

“Game manager!” opposing counsel shouts.

You would like to go with the same numbers that work for you with Eli because you really can rattle off a list of games that Sanchez has plucked out of the fire with fine late play (Cleveland, Detroit and Houston two years ago, the Colts playoff game, Buffalo last year, even Sunday in Miami) … except his fourth-quarter splits are so grisly they don’t belong in a family newspaper.

What, then?

“Mark usually plays his best at the end of games,” coach Rex Ryan said yesterday. “I think you saw that again last week.”

“He has a confidence that allows him to believe in what he’s doing when the game’s on the line no matter what’s happened in the game until that point,” guard Brandon Moore said. “You can sense that in the huddle with everyone: Guys want to hold their blocks longer, backs want to make their cuts sharper, receivers want to run faster. And you look at Mark and just tell: He wants to make a play. And believes he can.”

Little of this is apparent unless you watch Sanchez every week, and even then it isn’t as if he aces the eye-test every time out. Sunday in Miami, in many ways, was a quintessential Sanchez game. He made those two hideous interceptions — one in the end zone — that leave everyone — fans, teammates, coaches — shaking heads. He overthrew a couple of open receivers, threw behind a few, and immediately became a candidate for “worst 300-yard game ever by a quarterback.”

And yet: In the fourth quarter, he led a touchdown drive that briefly bought the Jets the lead. And in OT, he made a note-perfect 38-yard throw to Santonio Holmes, in the hands, in stride, which set up the game-winning field goal. It isn’t the first game to go like this for Sanchez, blanket ugliness interrupted by two or three moments of brilliance.

“I’m used to it,” he laughed, and it’s good he can laugh about it, maybe it explains how he can shake off the numbers, shake off his reputation, shake off his mistakes and still want to make a play. And still believe that he can. Thirty-three times as a pro. And counting.